Uber Under Pressure: AI Spending Questioned

AI Spending Under Scrutiny at Uber

Andrew Macdonald, president of Uber, recently expressed his concerns regarding the justification of the company's increasing expenditures on artificial intelligence. According to him, it has become "difficult to draw a line" between these investments and the concrete features delivered to users.

Uber has already exhausted its annual budget for AI just four months into the year 2026, raising questions about the effectiveness and return on investment of these expenses. Macdonald emphasized that despite an increased consumption of tokens for the Claude Code program, the company is not seeing a proportional improvement in features for consumers.

"That link isn't there yet, is it? I think there may implicitly be more things being shipped, but it's very difficult to draw a line between one of those statistics and, 'Okay, now we are actually producing 25% more useful features for consumers,'" he stated.

An Investment Strategy Under Pressure

In 2025, Uber invested $3.4 billion in research and development, marking a 9% increase from the previous year. However, the lack of tangible results calls into question the viability of this strategy.

Uber's CEO, Dara Khosrowshahi, recently announced that the company is offsetting its growing investments in AI by reducing the hiring of new employees. Macdonald added that it is crucial to discuss token consumption and associated costs in relation to the number of employees.

"So, if you are unable to draw a direct line between the amount of useful features you are shipping to your users, that exchange becomes harder to justify," he concluded.